


the terror of knowing what the world is about

by drcalvin



Category: Good Omens - All Media Types, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Awkward Kissing, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 11:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19150480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/pseuds/drcalvin
Summary: Four days into the rest of their lives, Crowley takes a long drive and Aziraphale comes to realize that there are more important things to do than inventory books.And then, at long last, they make the effort together.





	the terror of knowing what the world is about

**Author's Note:**

> I blame everything on FFA and Freddy Mercury's voice.
> 
> This is book-verse, but fairly series compliant.

Four days into the rest of their lives, Crowley had dined the angel, driven the angel and done his damned to distract the angel from the lure of re-sorting his entire book collection. Something like half the books in his bookstore had turned into – while still first edition and highly valuable – titles an eleven-year-old Antichrist considered good literature. Aziraphale hadn't taken it too badly, once a politely worded phonecall made the shelf of misprint Bibles tiptoe back into existence, shouldering aside the shelf containing the complete Hardy Boys Mysteries with the self-confidence that came from being older, heftier and considerably more mysterious. 

Crowley was still waiting to see whether Adam's restoring powers on his driving music would last past a fortnight. The Vivaldi had already acquired a heavy bass-beat, so he had his suspicions; on the other hand, he liked it. As Aziraphale pointed out, the Bentley had always been accommodating to Crowley's wishes.

Tonight then, Aziraphale had begged off. Said, without even the decency to look apologetic, that he really needed to take a complete inventory of the store. The young Antichrist's powers hadn't reached into Aziraphale's complex Excel sheets to update the listings and, you know how it is with inventoring, the longer you leave it off, the more painful it becomes… What if he sold a book1 without having a proper grasp of its value or history! His accounts would be a mess, it simply couldn't be allowed to happen.

Reluctantly, Crowley had to give Aziraphale the point. Not on the sale of books, but on how the passage of time was an annoyance even to their sort when it came to keeping track of the paperwork. He usually wrote his centennial expense reports in a substance-fueled rush three days before they were due; the only reason Dagon, Lord of the Files, hadn't strung him up by his scales several thousand years ago was that Hell encouraged double-bookkeeping and fudged accounts. But the one time he included one of the helpful miracles made for the sake of the Arrangement, he'd been subjected to hanging by red tape, death by a thousand paper cuts and been forced to eat his last fifty reports; it took almost two months of drinking and flossing to get the taste of utter bullshit out of his mouth when he got back up.

So, with much rolling of eyes and complaining about stuffy angels not knowing when to kick back and enjoy, Crowley left Aziraphale to his inventory and set out for his own amusements. 

On the fourth evening, he went drinking and dancing in a number of London's best clubs. Crowley was perfectly aware he wasn't as good a dancer as the best of humanity, but nobody cared. He had enthusiasm, an unlimited credit card and the ability to skip the line and be politely greeted by the most hardened doormen in the country. It took only two clubs for him to acquire his own little following. 

He left most of them behind the next morning, when he dropped by the Stock Exchange and played silly buggers with the numbers on the board. To keep the whale-fancying Antichrist nice and settled, he made sure to adjust some of the most environmentally destructive companies downwards. Unfortunately, the petroleum index perked back up as soon as Crowley stopped leaning on the graph, but he did give two of the brokers a nervous breakdown.

Crowley had an early dinner and saw a play. It began as the tragedy outlined in the playbill, but because he was in the mood for something entertaining, ended with more collapsing scenery and slapstick scenes than Noises Off. Then he went to a late-night horror movie marathon and cackled at the ham-handed depictions of Lowest Management. It wasn't as if Hell had any real style, but at least they didn't go in for terrible accents, worse phallic imagery and those bloody pitchforks.

When the sun began to rise on the fifth day, Crowley drove home to take a nap.

The sun was mildly surprised to see him again so soon. Crowley, usually a marathon sleeper and accomplished sun-spot napper, was up barely half an hour after he'd gone to bed. He miracled on a black suit and speedwalked out from his expensive Mayfair estate, stopping only to buy a triple-strength espresso. The kiosk owner was too surprised to be awake, open and in sudden possession of a state-of-the-art coffee machine and freshly ground beans to even need miracling to forget the payment. 

Sleeping, Crowley decided while he sat in the Bentley, the soothing tones of someone's2 _I'm in love with my car_ washing away all traces of what he refused to classify as nightmare, was a waste of time. The world was back after much effort. Any self-respecting devil should enjoy its possibilities thoroughly before going in for a proper sleep. No point with some measly few-hour naps, no, better to save up for a while and then devote some proper time to Sloth.

He took a drive instead, and didn't stop until he'd reached Inverness. When Crowley sat down for lunch, the Bentley pinging while it cooled down, his cellphone rang. It wasn't the phone he used for work, nor the phone he had failed to get Downstairs to use. Instead, it was the sleekest one he owned, the one the Angel had managed to call recently.

"Yeah?" Crowley said. "Already? No, no, not insinuating anything. Just, figured you'd made a good push… Sure." He cast a glance at his watch, then the position of the sun. "I dunno. What about dinner instead? Make a proper night of it. Right. At seven. Yes, of course I'm picking you up, you think I want to be seen in a hansom carriage? Oh, a velocipede! And how long ago – I'm not assuming anything, angel. Seven sharp. Ciao."

Crowley left his food uneaten and the bill unpaid, but he rolled back the wrought iron-fence he'd moved so that he could fit his Bentley onto the restaurant's patio (he wasn't leaving it out of sight in a strange city after everything that had gone down! Poor thing was probably still traumatized). He also didn't bother preparing the kitchen for the surprise health code inspection that was due in the two days, so he figured they owed him one.

The speeds Crowley could get up to when the road lay moderately empty before him and he only had to move inanimate things - impractical curves, trees, little things like that – were beyond Aziraphale's wildest fears. Still, it took some effective usage of miracles to let him screech into his usual spot in front of the bookshop with twenty seconds to spare. He also thought he should suggest they stick to a local place; the traffic tangle he'd left London in might implode like a gasoline-soaked Gordian knot if either of them threw anything more at it.

Crowley adjusted the rear mirror, and swapped his plain driving suit into a pinstripe with a red diamond tie. He'd seen the outfit in a magazine, though he saw no reason to ever wear a white shirt. Aziraphale exited the store just as Crowley stepped out of the car, and he went to open the door while the angel locked up. 

"Good evening," Aziraphale said. He was in a herringbone tweed and – Crowley blinked as a memory rattled up from the depths of 1931 – a pale red bowtie that had been a gift from Crowley. A courtesy gift for keeping the miracle of a parking spot running, while he took care of some overseas business for Downstairs. 

"Hi," Crowley replied. The ouroboros ring he'd just transported from his drawer onto his finger clinked against the handle of the Bentley. It was about 120 years older than the bowtie, but one of the few of Aziraphale's sartorial gifts he would be caught dead in. "Hop in, angel. The traffic is pandemonium tonight, so how about we just go to something around the corner?" 

"Certainly. What about the little Chinese place down the road? I heard the owner is thinking of retiring, and you know what happens to the menu then." Aziraphale took his seat and then, before Crowley had the opportunity to tear off towards the restaurant, laid a gentle hand on Crowley's arm. Waiting a beat, he then slid his grip forward, until there was not even the thin barrier of fabric between them. His hand was very soft, and rather warm, and though Crowley neither breathed nor blinked, he clenched the steering wheel with enough force that a car less occultly infused than his Bentley would be creaking in distress. 

"I'm…" Aziraphale cleared his throat. Shielded by his glasses, Crowley glanced at him. He was looking fixedly ahead, as if he was already looking for obstructing pedestrians, despite the fact that they weren't moving at all. "I found my inventoring going slower than usual."

"Bummer," Crowley managed. "Too many colorful spines?"

"What? Oh, no I… I merely found myself distracted. And not by reading." 

Not sweating, because Crowley didn't allow his body such unpleasant habits as handsweat, he managed to release his death grip on the wheel and turn his hand around. Aziraphale let him, then folded their fingers together.

He tore his gaze from the road and looked at Crowley, who refused to turn his head or acknowledge their clasped hands. "I realized that I had more important things to do. Than inventory."

"I drove to Scotland," Crowley said.

"When?"

He gave a one-shouldered shrug, and the glasses slipped down a little. Well, couldn't be helped then; he just had to look at Aziraphale. It was embarrassing to get caught peeking. "Today."

Aziraphale frowned at that. "When I called you –"

"Yeah. But it wasn't business, nothing important," Crowley hurried to add. "Just felt like a drive."

"Your poor car, though. The Scottish border is quite a distance."

Crowley hummed noncommittaly.

"I suppose we could stay in," Aziraphale said slowly, as if pretending very hard that the idea was just occuring to him. "I believe the restaurant delivers."

Whether they usually did or not, they would tonight. "Not afraid I'll mess up the inventoring?"

"You couldn't," Aziraphale said. A nervous smile fluttered over his features, then deepened and he gave Crowley's hand a little squeeze. "I only ever got so far as to print out my lists. And then… it's the oddest thing, but I sat down to listen to the night before I started. You know, just making sure it was all ticking along as it should. It was, is. Nothing wrong in Soho, or in London. Not more than usual. Which is the whole point of it, I suppose."

"Right."

His thumb moved in small circles over Crowley's skin, and his words were no longer reaching Crowley through the displacement of air molecules alone. "And I thought of my books, how you told me the bookstore was nothing but ash and rubble and – and that hurt. A great deal. But then I thought of what would have happened if I hadn't received it back."

"Angel, that –"

"And I would be fine, Crowley. I would go on, and we would drink to its memory, and maybe I'd start a new collection in a few years, or I'd move on to, to art or horticulture or," he huffed in annoyance as his imagination ran dry, "vintage velocipede collecting. I don't know. What I do know, after ruminating about it for a highly unproductive night, is that I don't need my bookstore. No more than I needed those Babylonian clay tablets, or the club I used to go to, or my workshop in Men-nefer."

"I don't need the Bentley either, but I'm damn grateful to have her," Crowley interjected. "Look, I don't mind if you need to spend some time breathing book dust. I didn't think you'd take my whinging that badly."

"But I didn't want the book dust! I just wanted to get you… out," Aziraphale said, and then he gave a short scream and threw himself at Crowley. His free hand fumbled at his collar, and then he grabbed the shoulder of the suit hard enough to rumple it. "I don't mean like that," he said. "Crowley, my dear, I meant that I didn't want you to go at all, and that's why I felt that had to ask you to leave and – I am making a complete hash of this."

Crowley wanted, more than anything else, to let loose with a flippant truth: _I'm used to that after 6000 years_ , or perhaps, _Don't worry, wouldn't know how to handle anything else from you_. But Aziraphale's arm was pressed across his chest and his nails were digging into Crowley's hand, as if he feared that he was about to turn into smoke and fade away. The angel's pulse thundered through his corporation, echoing into Crowley where they touched. And just as sleep had eluded him this morning, his flippancy did now. 

He wet his lips, and Aziraphale's eyes grew wide. Oh, his tongue had gone forked again; it was hard to keep track of all the little details with the angel so close and the awesome things he wasn't quite saying ringing between them. 

"I don't want you to leave," said Aziraphale, and though his tone of voice was quite different, it reminded Crowley of how he would call light into the dark spaces of the world. "I haven't wanted you to leave for some time now. Quite a lot longer than I believe I can figure out at this moment. But I'm a damned coward sometimes, and so I decided I must do inventory and then I realized that – oh, will you take off your glasses, I can't see a thing through them. Please."

The glasses faded from reality before Crowley had finished shaping the thought. 

"Pushy, angel," he said. 

Aziraphale tittered a little. "Sometimes, my dear serpent, I think you are maybe not pushy enough."

Now that was just insulting. Crowley nudged the blood in his veins to flow properly again, and snaked a hand up the angel's back, so that he could hook two fingers above the collar and just hold him there while he gathered his frazzled mind.

"If you're pretending you wouldn't have run to the other end of the Earth…" Crowley began, only to be stopped by the staggering twist of regret and self-recriminations that wound through the angel at his words. "Stop that," he hissed, "I know you would have run, you have more than once, but then you always came back." 

"Of course I did," Aziraphale said. "Because you're not one of my books and I do, desperately, need you!" And he clenched his eyes together, and pressed a terrible kiss more or less on Crowley's slack mouth. 

Crowley gasped, and swallowed, and then he freed his hand long enough to adjust Aziraphale's face and his own spine, before returning the effort with his own slightly less terrible kiss. 

The third one they managed together and it landed on quite decent.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Crowley had just _looked_ at him; considering Aziraphale's sales/aqusitions ratio was so negative that he'd had to Improve the cash register to handle it, this was about as good an excuse as Crowley needing some time alone for harp training. back
> 
> 2) Possibly one of the Bachsback


End file.
